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Video: Little Pain, “SMH”

Little Pain is the kind of rapper YouTube commenters tell to stop rapping. Though his first video, embedded below, still has under 8,000 views, his "sad rap" concept (sample lyric: Shed some tears up in your spouse/ Find teardrops all on the blouse/ Shedding tears what I'm about… Yeah I cry, and I pout) has been covered in a number of sizable blog posts, most critically on Refined Hype, where Dharmic X wrote: "It upsets me that a rapper from Brooklyn would make music that belittles those who fight with actual tormented emotions, considering that one of Brooklyn's brightest stars-in-the-making, Capital Steez, was unable to conquer his demons, committing suicide less than six months ago."

With Little Pain's second music video, "SMH," premiering above, I'm still not sure what to think—and that's what makes his music so interesting. Maybe he trivializes depression, but it seems presumptuous to assume he's not actually depressed and doing a creative destruction thing, in which case who am I to tell him he's going about it wrong. In any case, it's gotten some people talking about something more important than rap. On the other hand, by so often using sadness as a loaded catchall in place of something meaningless (e.g. popped a tear, I'm crying, the Trinidad Jame$-and-molly referencing hook on "High Cry"), Little Pain's seemingly direct statement might really be a sad ghost costume draped over nothing at all. For me, it's still up in the air, but what could be more compelling than music that asks what good music should be? His debut "Sad Tape," entitled When Thugz Cry, comes out later this year.